Disaster Response

BLOOMERG BUSINESS WEEK                                                                                            Nov. 4, 2014
By John Tozzi

...Blocking most travel from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where a total of more than 13,000 people have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began in March, would only modestly reduce how long it takes for the virus to reach new countries, according to mathematical simulations published in the journal Eurosurveillance. For example, stopping 71 percent of travelers from entering other nations in Africa from the three countries in which Ebola is widespread would delay a case from appearing elsewhere on the continent by only 30 days, according to the model. ...

Medical staff wait for passengers arriving from Guinea at the airport in Abidjan on Oct. 20,as Ivory Coast's airline resumed flights to the three west African countries worst-hit by Ebola. Photograph by Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Image

TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL                               Nov. 3, 2014
By Kelly Grant
Canada is spending another $30.5-million to fight Ebola, but Ottawa is still not answering pleas from international aid organizations for medical personnel to care for the ill in West Africa.

The bulk of the money announced on Monday – $23.5-million – will be spent on testing a Canadian vaccine and an experimental therapy, ZMapp, both of which were developed largely at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg....

A lab technician at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba November 3, 2014.
(LYLE STAFFORD/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada has so far dispatched two mobile laboratories with rotating teams of scientists to rapidly diagnose or rule out Ebola in Sierra Leone.

But Ottawa has been reluctant to send medical staff to West Africa because the government cannot guarantee they could be airlifted out if they fall ill.

SCIENCE INSIDER                                         Nov. 3, 2014

By Kai Kupferschmidt

VIENNA—After Oyewale Tomori finished his talk on Ebola here at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance, there was stunned silence. Tomori, the president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, used his plenary to deliver a scathing critique of how African countries have handled the threat of Ebola and how corruption is hampering efforts to improve health. Aid money often simply disappears, Tomori charged, "and we are left underdeveloped, totally and completely unprepared to tackle emerging pathogens."

"Ebola is Africa's problem," says Oyewale Tomori.

Trained as a veterinarian, Tomori was the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) regional virologist for the African region in 1995 during the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

WASHINGTON POST                                Nov. 3, 2014
By Kevin Sieff

GANTA, LIBERIA  --
The U.S. is erecting a new Ebola treatment center, slated to be ­finished later this month and manned by newly imported doctors. Just the sight of American helicopters flying over Ganta, a city of about 50,000, has lifted hopes here.

...a modern treatment center won’t be enough to eliminate Ebola in a place where the outbreak ­appears to rise and fall every few weeks and where victims sometimes disappear into remote communities with the disease. The question is whether those victims can be persuaded to use the new facility once it is built, preventing the spread of the disease in some of the country’s most vulnerable ­areas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/can-a-us-military-ebola-treatment-center-slow-ebola-in-one-hard-hit-city/2014/11/01/afb7b058-60fd-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html